Bonhams

Issue 55, Summer 2018

Editor's Letter: Lucinda Bredin

"Unlike James Dean, almost every rebel does have a cause. It's why they put their head above the parapet in the first place. But rebellion takes many forms – from those who make nonconformity their life's work to those who embark on a mission to stretch boundaries, whatever the cost. Then some fall out of society into trouble through a personality defect.

Take the case of swashbuckling National Treasure Sir Francis Drake. It seems plain as a pikestaff that the buccaneer's initial motive was straightforward greed. Had he followed in his father's footsteps, Drake would have led a quiet life as a gentleman farmer. However, led astray by his cousin John Hawkins, he spent his youth instead as a pirate, raiding Spanish galleons in the Caribbean and returning with booty worth more than £100,000 (perhaps £15 million in today's money).

But forget the slave-trading and smuggling: as naval historian Sam Willis points out on page 26, Drake's most egregious act of rebellion was in the way he polevaulted into the nobility. Drake's portrait, on offer in July's Old Masters sale, shows Drake as he saw himself: a gentleman of property, resplendent in armour and ruff, equipped to defeat foes on the foredeck – or at court.

Jean Dubuffet was in the family business as a wholesale wine merchant until, aged 41, he devoted himself to painting. Dubuffet didn't just rebel against his family – he rebelled against the entire canon of art. As Alastair Smart describes on page 32, Dubuffet wanted art to be a direct projection of a person's psyche, rather than observations of nature. The movement he founded, Art Brut, tapped into a longing for the raw, far removed from stultifyingly overcivilised elite art. Given the surge in the market for his work, Dubuffet's visceral passion still speaks to today's collectors.

Finally, do come to see our exhibition of Alexander Golovin's set designs for Stravinsky's Le Rossignol, one of the most revolutionary operas ever. It was deemed so shocking that it lasted only one performance in Russia, but Golovin's exquisite watercolours are reminders that rebels forge the path to progess."